A first-half penalty from Jorginho has earned Chelsea a 1-0 victory over Everton on the opening weekend of the Premier League.

The early stages were brought to a halt when Ben Godfrey suffered what has been described as a 'severe lower leg injury, leading to eight minutes of added-on time.

Jorginho's spot kick came during the final minutes of that period, ensuring that Chelsea took advantage of Liverpool only drawing at Fulham earlier in the day.

As expected, both managers included summer signings in their respective starting lineups, with James Tarkowski and Dwight McNeil featuring in the Everton XI and Kalidou Koulibaly and Raheem Sterling being handed their bows in the Chelsea side.

While Chelsea had the better of the early stages, the opening of the match was marred by a serious ankle injury suffered by Ben Godfrey, who attempted to make a last-gasp tackle to atone for his own misplaced backpass.

Soon after the restart, Mason Mount saw a low shot from distance palmed away by Pickford, before Edouard Mendy was needed at the other end to tip Tarkowski's header over the crossbar.

Everton continued to look dangerous on the counter-attack when Chelsea over-committed, but the Blues were having the better possession, even if they did not look like making it count.

Sterling thought he had opened the scoring, only to be marginally offside when converting a rebound, but the visitors went ahead during the closing minutes of eight that were added on due to Godfrey's earlier injury.

Abdoulaye Doucoure clumsily barged Ben Chilwell over in the penalty area and Jorginho made no mistake from 12 yards, his composed effort finding the inside netting of Pickford's right-hand corner.

Despite Chelsea having the momentum heading into the break, it was Everton who had the better of proceedings after the restart with Demarai Gray soon seeing a shot deflected wide of the far post.

Mendy also had to be alert to make reactive save during a goalmouth scramble, and it eventually led to Tuchel feeling forced into freshening up his team in the form of Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who went to right wing-back, and Christian Pulisic.

Injuries dominated the next phase of play with Everton's Yerry Mina seeming to tweak something in his ankle and Chelsea's Koulibaly being withdrawn after receiving treatment on the same side of the pitch.

That led to a debut for Marc Cucurella, who was still a Brighton & Hove Albion player on Friday morning, while Armando Broja was introduced at the same time with 15 minutes remaining.

The alterations helped Chelsea and they almost doubled their lead when Cucurella found Sterling in space from 10 yards out, but Vitaliy Mylolenko got across to block the subsequent shot.

A medical emergency in the stand led to another short delay of approximately three minutes, and the board went up with 10 additional minutes at the end of normal time.

To Chelsea's credit, they efficiently ran down the clock, helped by Pulisic dispossessing Pickford outside of his penalty area and earning a free kick.

Although Everton still had time to launch a couple of high balls into the area, Chelsea defended with authority to get their season off to the perfect start. body check tags ::